


Glitched

by autieami



Category: Glitch Techs (Cartoon)
Genre: Existential Crisises, Found Family, Gen, enemies-to-allies, ish, kinda angsty but it’ll end up heartwarming I promise, of course
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:41:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26132068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/autieami/pseuds/autieami
Summary: Miko gets a blast in the face from a gauntlet at full power, and finds herself slowly disintegrating and glitching out. Who can she trust?
Comments: 5
Kudos: 57





	Glitched

“If there’s one thing I hate more than a glitch that won’t stay still—“

“It’s a *big* glitch that won’t stay still,” Five said, finishing Miko’s sentence. “Ah, nerds!” He ducked an incoming plume of fiery lava and the DeathDragon roared in frustration. 

“Oh man, that’ll take some major coverup,” Miko groaned, sidestepping the steaming flow as it oozed across the center of the street. “C’mon, I’m getting *tired* of this thing.”

Five nodded. “Combo number seven?”

“Coming right up,” Miko grinned. 

A laser blast from Five’s gauntlet struck the dragon in the side, leaving the pixels charred. The dragon snarled and backed up a few steps, its tail casually knocking into a streetlight and breaking it nearly in two.

Miko darted around towards the back of the beast as Five stepped squarely into its sights, raising his shield. Another blast of lava came boiling out from between the rows of sharpened teeth. In the cover of the steam, Miko leaped onto the dragon’s back, her gauntlet already glowing. 

“Miko! Watch out!” Five shouted. The dragon swung its head up, sending Miko falling. 

Miko shrieked as she fell onto her gauntlet and the discharge surrounded her in a glowing purple cloud. 

“Alright, that does it!” Five narrowed his eyes and sent another blast right between the eyes of the dragon. It shook its head and leapt forward. Five ducked between the oncoming claws and lifted his hand straight onto its chest. “I’m not wasting a witty insult on you,” he growled, his gauntlet lighting up as the glitch disintegration ray sent the dragon bursting into a million tiny green pixels that drifted slowly down and disappeared like radioactive bubbles. The small root glitch, helpless now, got sucked into the gauntlet, shrieking all the way.

Five groaned. “You okay, Miko?” He knelt by her, his brows knit in concern.

She sat up slowly. “Uh. Yeah. I think.” Her vision was,,off. It was like she was looking at Five through a low res video. She blinked and slammed her hand against her head to clear her vision. “Yeah. I’m fine. Hey, great work on that glitch! Didn’t know you had that much badassery in ya, partner.”

Five grinned and helped her to her feet. “Hey, when duty calls, I know how to answer.”

“Alright! Nice XO count on that one. Ready to rack up some more?” Five said as he hopped into the Hinobi TechMobile

Miko slumped in her seat. “Yeah, uhhh,,, I kinda ache all over. Yknow, thrown from the back of a dragon onto concrete and all. I miiight take the rest of the day off.” 

Five looked over at her. “Yeah...okay. Hey, you need me to call your parents?” 

Miko grinned. “Worrywart. I’m fine, let’s just head back to HQ.”

“You got it!”

———

Miko groaned despairingly and then clapped her hands over her mouth. She stood up and snuck a quick peek over the door of the bathroom stall. Okay, good. Nobody else in here. Probably because the Hinobi store never bothered to clean the bathrooms, so there was a flourishing population of crickets and a faint smell of something she’d really rather not identify. But hey, you need a place to be alone, it was perfect.

She twiddled her fingers. There was an unmistakable fuzziness at the ends. If she looked really hard, she could swear they were ever so slightly translucent. 

“Well, I did always want clear skin,” she said, and snorted. 

“Okay but um, this is not good. Ughhh.”

Was this some sort of weird medical condition? Heart problems ran on Mom’s side of the family, but she was pretty sure she’d have heard about it if there was a family tendency to go all Invisible Man. Maybe it was,,maybe she’d worn her gauntlet for too long? I mean, being around that much tech all the time has to have some weird side effects, right?

She slipped the wristband off and tossed it over the door so it landed perfectly on the sink. “Niiice.”

She tried to pace in the stall. It was pretty difficult, since most of the space was taken up by the stained toilet and an empty toilet paper holder, so she gave up. “Okay. All I need to do is wear some gloves and keep the gauntlet off for a while. Right? Right.”

She straightened her shoulders and took a deep breath before grabbing her wristband off the sink and darting back through the doors. She wove between a couple of techs buried in their phones and made it to the lockers. She threw her wristband inside her locker and grabbed a couple of Hinobi-issue gloves out of the messy pile of various uniform pieces. “Gotcha!” she said as she slammed the door closed.

“Got what?” Bergy asked from the hallway behind her. “Did you find a glitch?”

“Hahaha nope! Uhh just an, uh, pencil I dropped! Found it!” Miko flashed him a grin and raced off.

Bergy blinked. “Okay, uh, bye!”

Miko barely stopped between the store and her home, where she took the stairs two at a time and slammed her bedroom door closed behind her.   
She leaned back and slid a glove off her hand gingerly, trying not to breathe. 

She wiggled the fingers. They were,,,shorter? And she could *definitely* see through them now. 

“Aahhh, nerds.”


End file.
